personally vouched for every soldier he brought to the table. It was his responsibility to train them and mold them into a cohesive unit. It’s six months later, and they’re failing at the basic security procedures. That’s not nerves. That’s incompetence. Hiring him was a mistake, my mistake. I wasted our time and money and I put us in danger . . .”
She looked like she was about to walk across hot coals barefoot. Oh, Mom.
“It wasn’t a mistake,” I said. “It just didn’t work out. He looked really good on paper. He has all the qualifications. He’s just . . .”
“He just cares about being liked more than he cares about doing his job,” Mom finished. “I’ll handle it.”
Bern raised his head from his laptop. “Found something,” he said.
I found Runa in the guest bedroom. She sat on the queen bed, next to Ragnar, who was curled up under a blanket. Sleep had softened his face. He looked so young right now.
“Hey,” I said quietly.
“Hey. He’s still asleep,” Runa said. “Is that normal?”
“Yes. It’s normal.”
“Have you actually done this before?”
“Yes.”
Last year one of Rogan’s security people had developed an unhealthy obsession with Arabella and decided to break into our house in the middle of the night. I had fallen asleep in the media room, and he surprised me as he blundered past. He slept for two days, and once he woke up, he was an emotional zombie for a week. Rogan fired him and strongly encouraged him to move out of state. The last we heard, the man was in Alaska.
“What happens if he doesn’t wake up tomorrow?”
“We’ll put him on an IV and wait some more. His respiration is normal, his heartbeat is steady, and if we really tried, we could probably wake him up for a few seconds. He just needs rest, Runa.”
She looked at her brother, reached over, and pulled a corner of the blanket up to expose his feet. “He always kicks the blanket off to stick his feet out. When he was little, it used to cause him anxiety. He wanted to sleep with his feet uncovered but he was scared that a monster from under the bed would grab his foot at night . . .” Her voice trailed off.
I wanted so much to make it better for her. “He will wake up.”
Runa looked up at me and held her hand out. “Runa Etterson, Prime Venenata.”
It was the way she had introduced herself at Nevada’s wedding. Why were we doing the introductions again? “We’ve already met.”
“No. I’ve met Catalina Baylor. She’s shy and she tries to fade into the background. She gets embarrassed if anyone glances at her a second too long. I watched her at her sister’s wedding and half of the time she looked like she was waiting for her chance to run away.”
“I was.”
“I saw you verbally eviscerate Conway a few hours ago. You had this look on your face like you were some ice princess and he’d trespassed in your kingdom. And then you cut my sister’s reanimated corpse into four pieces.”
“Conway was wrong to treat you the way he did, and reanimated bodies have to be disabled. The smaller the pieces, the lesser the threat.”
She shook her head. “That’s not my point and you know it. What the hell happened to you?”
I came over, sat on the other side of the bed, and put the small box I was carrying onto the covers.
“When we met at Nevada’s wedding, I was panicking. That was the first time I was in charge of anything important. You were born a Prime, into a House of Primes. I was born a normal person, into a normal family, except that I had this terrible magic I had to hide so I wouldn’t accidentally hurt people with it. I was only required to go to school, get good grades, and keep my magic hidden. Nobody expected me to take any responsibility for anything else. I had the luxury of covering my face and saying, ‘This is too hard. I can’t do this.’ And I did.”
“So what changed?”
I sighed. “We became a House. I was certified as a Prime. I had a nervous breakdown.”
Runa blinked. “Why?”
“Because it was all too much. I needed rules. As long as I followed the rules, nobody got hurt and everybody left me alone. Suddenly, all my rules no longer applied and hiding in the background wasn’t an option. I was freaking out. Then Rogan’s mother found me and offered